The Song Is You Read online

  “She was here. I saw her. There was five. The girl and another girl —a high yellow—and three men. The two from the pictures and another fella who kept hanging around the door wanting to leave before things got even worse …”

  “What things?”

  “I just know they took a room and the girl went in with the two

  fellas. They bought some crazy, doped-up ole mule—”

  “Mule?”

  “Moonshine. Corn. They bought it and a few bindles of junk and took it in with them. The yellow girl and the other fella stayed in the parlor with me and tried to play cards. But they were both scared. They asked me if I would go stand outside the door and see if I could hear anything.”

  “And did you?”

  “I heard crying. I heard her crying real soft. I could hear the little one—you know, the one who sings into the camera like he’s going to cry in their pictures—talking to her, muffled and saying crazy things. Saying what he was going to do to her. Things he was doing to her.”

  “What did he say he was doing to her?” Hop asked. He heard the woman’s voice again, breaking slightly, “No-no … no …” Then, “Oh no, oh no. Not that. Not that.”

  “You know,” she said, ignoring his question. “That one, he comes all the time. He was here just last Tuesday. We all say his mind is gone and the girls better not go with him. One night he came running down the hall and I saw him and he had an old bottle of

  grenadine in his hand, held it close like a baby. He was out of his mind on the pipe and walking from one wall to the other. I’ll never forget: he looked at me, leaned down with the devil in his eyes, and said, ‘I could use this,’ and he pulled out the stopper—it was the color of a harvest moon. And he said, ‘I could use this to take out your eyes. I could put this right in your eye.’”

  “Is that what he was doing to her?” Hop waved the picture, his voice hoarse and funny. “To Jean?”

  “The other one, the handsome one, he just liked to knock them around or shove things in them. The usual.”

  “What did they do? To her?” He shook the photo at her. His hand kept thrusting forward with it.

  “All I know is they sent one of the houseboys down to the docks to pick up a couple drunk merchant marines. I don’t know if he found any. And the noises, the screams were loud. I went back later and I could hear a flash. A camera flash going. Over and over.”

  “What next?”

  “I told you: that’s all I know,” she said.

  “Do you think …” Hop ran the back of his hand across his

  forehead. “Do you think they killed her?”

  “Listen, mister, word in here was it took Frenchie and Big Arthur two hours to clean up the room. The bucket kept brimming over red.”

  Hop handed her the other ten dollars and leaned against the wall, which felt swampy against the backs of his hands. He didn’t say anything. Couldn’t imagine what he would say.

  He listened again for the woman’s voice but could no longer hear words. Only what could have been the whimper of a lost dog or the

  plaintive mewl of a cat. And then not that.

  The girl looked at him. And her eyes were still working.

  “Maybe you know a little more,” he guessed, looking at her, at the

  way she was lingering, one leg bent behind her, slippered foot grazing the brick.

  “You wanna come down there with me for a second?” she said, pointing to a set of splintered cellar doors at the far end of the alley.

  Hop stood straight. “Not for playtime?”

  She smiled—a little sadly, Hop thought. “No, mister. Not me. Not like that. Not yet.”

  He followed her as she walked toward the entrance, trying not to dwell on the thought of what might be down there.

  She opened the doors and a buried smell blasted in their faces, ocean sewage and rot.

  “Out of the frying pan into the fire,” he tried to joke as he followed her down a short set of steps.

  The crabbed cellar was pitch-black and wheezed with every throb of the nearby surf. From the faint glow of the alley, Hop could see the girl pull a pack of matches from her pinafore and light a hanging lamp that swung above them as if in the hull of a pirate ship.

  Under the lamp, he could make out a cellar wall lined with pony kegs and another stacked with overflowing laundry bags. In a flash, the girl had slid into a crawl space between the tightly wedged kegs. Like the heroine from some old children’s book he’d once paged through in the children’s room at the Syracuse Public Library, some gilt-edged, dusty-smelling book with line drawings of ringletted adventuresses finding treasures in old attics—like this, Lemon Drop knocked a plank of wood loose, revealing a narrow crevice into which she slipped an umber arm.

  Hop watched, rapt, as she began tugging at something, all the while watching him intently. Watching him like a striptease artist might. Look at what I may or may not give you, show you, she seemed to be saying, her eyes narrow and cunning.

  Good God, how old is she, anyway, Hop thought, trying to blot out an uneasy feeling that—

  “You ready, my man?” she whispered through her doll mouth.

  “I am,” his voice managed, throatily, even as he found himself backing into an empty pony keg, which rolled noisily from side to side.

  From inside the hole, she pulled out her arm, first elbow, then wrist, then her hand clutching something. Hop peered under the dim, strobing light of the lamp, which seemed to teeter with every step made on the floor above it.

  Bit by bit, it came out of the hole.

  A pale pink sheet or blanket of some kind, festooned with dark flowers, or wreaths, some dark red flowers blooming in crazy patterns.

  Hop stepped closer. She had finally fished the entire thing from

  the pinched hole, her eyes gleaming.

  She rose to her feet, unfurling it as she did.

  It was a blanket, yes.

  But the pattern on it was no pattern. For a moment, he thought it was a drop cloth for painting. How else to explain the red—no, that was the streaming light from the alley; it was more of a ruddy brown —splotches all over, wild rings of various sizes and one deep blot about the size of a dinner plate?

  “What is that? What are you showing me?” he demanded, voice strangely constricted.

  “Come get a look,” she said, although Hop couldn’t have been more than five feet from her.

  He stepped toward her, conscious, with the swollen ceiling, of his height, of the way he towered over her, his shadow swallowing her like a monster in some old movie.

  But she wasn’t frightened at all. He could even see the shine of her teeth. She was smiling.

  It was when he stood within a foot of it that he had to admit it. Admit what it was.

  “They wrapped her in it,” she whispered, tongue clicking along her teeth as she spoke.

  “How do you know that?” Hop extended an arm to his side intending to lean his hand against the wall beside him. Trying to look casual. His hand on the wood, a piney knot, a plush tread of moss or sea slime. Standing there. Looking at this little devil.

  “They left it in the room,” she said, nodding slyly. “I snuck in and got it before Frenchie and Big Arthur could get there.”

  Hop looked more closely at it. At the striations and stippling. He could picture it once red and moving, wrapped around itself, now gone to rust. Jean Spangler, all tight-bodied, sure-faced, ready for anything, but, as the broadsheets would say, not this.

  “Why don’t you give me that?” he blurted, without even thinking. What was his idea? Something in the back of his head—something about getting it from her and tossing it into the water. The last bloody strand of the story slipping into the dark murk of the harbor.

  “Mister, what do I look like?” She dropped her arms. The blanket swam around her reedy legs.

  “What good’s it going to do you? It could be anything.” He tried to keep his face cool and logical. Like it was all a put-on in which he
was barely interested.

  “It’s my lucky charm. Can put it to use when I need it.”

  “What? To put the squeeze on? It doesn’t prove anything.”

  “Then what you want it for, big man?”

  “I’ll give you ten dollars for it. And that’s more than it’s worth,” Hop said, finding it hard to look at the thing. Its encrusted folds calling to mind past rivulets. Like some horrible shroud. All this and he was bargaining with her, trying to make a deal. He fought a raw taste in his mouth.

  She looked at him. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “That’s my business, honey,” he said, voice turning, losing its precision. He only called girls “honey” when something was slipping

  away from him fast. Mostly, they called him honey.

  “Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “Sorry. I just don’t trust you.”

  Hop raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise. “Really?” He wasn’t

  used to this. “You look like more trouble than I got luck for.”

  “Maybe I’ll just take it,” Hop said, voice harder than he meant. Something was clanging in his head. Why didn’t she trust him?

  “Then I call Big Arthur.”

  Hop surprised himself by saying, “Would he hear you down here?”

  There was a glint of recognition in her eyes that made Hop’s face burn. She nodded, then, chin out, said, “He’d hear me, mister. He’s closer than you think. He’d be here in a minute.”

  Hop tried to look away from the blanket, forced his eyes away. Tried to regain focus, and a sense of himself, of who he was, and wasn’t.

  “Hey, I don’t want it. I don’t need it,” he said, talking mostly to himself. He took a breath, rubbed his forehead. What did she think he was going to do? Did she really think he was someone who would steal her imagined ticket out of whore town? Who would rough her up? Who would—

  “I’m not that guy,” he said, backing away, backing up the cellar stairs. “I’m not that guy.”

  “Whatever you say, mister.” The oldest eyes in the world.

  Go home, he kept telling himself. But he couldn’t. Not after that.

  It was clearer now than ever. There’s things for Frannie Adair to find, if she’s good enough at looking.

  No matter how far ahead of her you are, if you stop, she could still catch up.

  But he wasn’t sure where to go. And so he decided to go to the only place left.

  The snaky devil at the center of this sordid tale: Gene Merrel. That fast-footed, puckish American boy on-screen was a bouncing shadow concealing a lathering brute.

  He couldn’t very well call Tony Lamont and ask for Merrell’s

  address. So how?

  Dot.

  Of course. Dot Hendry.

  A good-time girl who never missed a rising star. And with a black

  book to make Winchell himself jealous. “Dot? It’s Gil Hopkins.” From a night-chilled phone booth on

  Western Avenue.

  “Hop, even you should be in bed by now.” All Tennessee drawl.

  “Without you to warm my toes?” he asked, trying for endearing,

  inviting her to recall the last time they saw each other, Dot unrolling her stockings behind a set at the studio Christmas party.

  “Aw, I had too much Tom ‘n’ Jerry that night, Hop. You know I don’t go for publicity men. Only talent.”

  “Ouch.” Hop laughed. “Listen, doll…”

  The house was in posh Holmby Hills. Merrel wasn’t the type to bring girls like Dot to the family homestead, but she was a resourceful girl and had collected the address from a receipt tucked in a corner of the box holding the fur-lined gloves Merrel had given her as a come-on.

  “But that was a few years ago,” she’d told Hop. “I hear he’s hitting the pipe too much. The girls I know won’t go near him.”

  He pulled up in front of the creamy-walled Moorish house.

  Now what, jackass, Hop thought to himself.

  Every time he shut his eyes he saw the stained blanket.

  He could be home asleep.

  He could be anywhere.

  What do I think I’m going to see, Hop wondered. What could I

  possibly see?

  And then he was trudging up the sprinkler-beaded lawn.

  And then he was chest-high in shrubs, searching for a window

  without the blinds pulled shut.

  Fuck.

  It was close to three a.m. And Hop could see very little of the house’s interior other than the shine of marble floors, the hushed glow from a single light throwing a dusty glitter through a set of curtains in the upstairs windows.

  Hop smoked a cigarette while contemplating the odds he could survive an effort to scale the gutters, gripping turret edges to make his way to a second-floor balcony.

  Slim, boy. Real slim.

  He wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing there when he heard the sound of rustling mock-orange shrubs. He turned slowly, too dumbstruck by the night’s endless surprises to be startled.

  There stood a sharp-jawed man with a dark felt cap and all the

  loose-backed calm of a veteran groundskeeper.

  “Hunting rabbits?” the man said, hands in pockets.

  Hop managed a wan grin and not much else.

  “Ah, don’t bother. Listen, if you’re with one of those Hollywood

  rags—’cause I’m guessing by the suit, even if it is pretty wrinkled, that you’re no cop—you’re out of luck.”

  “Yeah?” Hop said.

  “The king of the castle, he ain’t here.” The man looked at the ground, his cap momentarily shielding his face. He sure as hell wants to say something, Hop thought. Stroke him a little.

  “That’s okay. I’m patient. And open to suggestions,” Hop said, wondering if the man was looking for some bucks, or just a comrade.

  “That I don’t have,” the man said. “Suggestions, that is. Patience I got in spades.”

  “So where’d milord go?” Hop said, working the comrade angle.

  The man gave a cold smirk. “He’s gone to … let me get this right: Palacio Sano.”

  A bell rang in Hop’s head. “Ah,” he said. “The Lourdes of the smart set”

  “You been there yourself, my man?”

  “Thankfully, no. But I’ve been in this town enough years to know what going to Palacio Sano means.” On Hop’s second week at the studio, rumor was a star’s wife had been paid off to keep her from going to the press about her husband’s trip to Palacio Sano. It didn’t stop the star from drinking a fifth of Mexican tequila and smashing his car into the side of his house rather than think about it any longer.

  “If only Merrel had seen all those movies they showed us in the army. The ones with the sexy French actresses all the way from Dubuque,” Hop said. He wondered if Merrel had been infected before or after the night with Jean Spangler. “Too far along for the penicillin?”

  “Hell, I’m no MD, blue eyes, but he sure thinks he’s on his last dance card.”

  Hop wondered how the studio would garnish this heartwarming tale. “Beloved Musical Hero Struck Down by Aneurysm”?

  “Lost to Heart Condition—His Family’s Curse”? Would he himself write the press release?

  “The duo will do no more,” the man sighed liltingly. “No more fighter pilots prancing through aircraft hangars, singing about love in the clouds. No more pirates dueting on top of skull-and-crossbone masts for the pleasure of fair lasses. All that crap those fellas been hustling for ten years.”

  “Sutton’ll grab a new pair of pipes to frolic with in no time,” Hop said.

  “You bet your life.”

  Hop looked across the dark expanse of the lawn. What more did he need to do, anyway? As much as he knew, there didn’t seem to be any danger of anything coming to light. The groundskeeper, he didn’t seem the type to pull out the megaphone—he hadn’t yet—and even if he did, a movie star spreading a social disease, even a bad one, was hardly pr
oof that he’d killed someone. And Lemon Drop— she’d likely bide her time with that blanket, and by the time she found a use for it, no one would even remember why they cared. All that was left unstitched was the tiny hole he’d opened for Frannie Adair. And how many days could she really spend on this, an unassigned story based on the ramblings of a drunken press agent probably talking big talk just to get under her garter?

  “So, does everyone in the house know? About the big S?” Hop’s mind clicked back on track. On some kind of track. He offered the man a cigarette, which he took. No. Just me. Ask me how.”

  “How, my man?” Hop held out his match to him. As the man’s crisp-eyed face moved closer to light his cigarette, Hop could see something twisting in his eyes.

  “Ask my girl.”

  ‘Why don’t you tell me instead.”

  “I am telling you,” the man said, scowling up at the house. “I brought her here one day to try to get her a job. A kind of secretary for the old lady. Before I knew it, he’d cornered her into the laundry room.”

  “Did he—did he hurt her?” Hop asked, even as he knew.

  The man didn’t answer. Then he shrugged and said, “I guess she had Stardust in her eyes.” He stroked tobacco off his tongue, his face a cold grimace. “But he was done with her an hour after meeting her. Only he stuck, boy. On her, he stuck.”

  Hop remembered Sutton’s carefree attitude when Hop had lied about the waitress with the clap. He bet Sutton didn’t know about Merrel. That would be some career-staggering surprise.

  And then the groundskeeper, like so many others, endless others, told Hop everything. Hop had always had that gift, that look of open-faced guilessness. A supreme gift and one Hop blamed for giving him his guile to begin with.

  The man told Hop that, after it was over, Merrel confessed. Told her all about his condition, even said he was sorry, in a way. But in another way, he wasn’t. And then he cried like a baby and told her she was polluted now, too. He said he’d had it long enough that he was sure he’d lost his mind. And she would now go like he did, go to places inside his head, and find that all rules, all laws, all reason would slip off her, too, like a coat falling to the carpet. Nothing seemed real anymore, he said, and there was no longer any difference between his waking life and his dream life. It was all the same and you had to realize it as the true state of grace, because that’s what it was. And he wondered if she would feel as free as he did to taste everything, run his polluted tongue over the blackest ridges and furrows in the worst places. He saw pictures in his head, of dark, rutted lesions, of cancers, ringed holes that were just under his skin—and he had to make the pictures real. He drew pictures of these things—rows of red circles—on cocktail napkins, newspapers, menus. The laundry girls would find them in his pockets. The maids would pick them up off the desks and bureaus. He told her he couldn’t stop thinking of them, of red-ringed sockets and red-ringed necks and cervices, and then everything started to look like how the disease looked in his head. And if it didn’t, he’d make it so. The darkness he felt all around, he said he’d had to decide a long time ago to swallow it whole.